Open AccessClimate Fiction and the Crisis of Imagination
Author(s) -
Chiara Xausa
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
exchanges
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2053-9665
DOI - 10.31273/eirj.v8i2.555
Subject(s) - anthropocene , indigenous , narrative , wright , harm , racism , environmental ethics , ecological crisis , sociology , environmental justice , environmental crisis , climate change , history , political science , gender studies , law , literature , ecology , art , philosophy , biology , art history
This article analyses the representation of environmental crisis and climate crisis in Carpentaria (2006) and The Swan Book (2013) by Indigenous Australian writer Alexis Wright. Building upon the groundbreaking work of environmental humanities scholars such as Heise (2008), Clark (2015), Trexler (2015) and Ghosh (2016), who have emphasised the main challenges faced by authors of climate fiction, it considers the novels as an entry point to address the climate-related crisis of culture – while acknowledging the problematic aspects of reading Indigenous texts as antidotes to the 'great derangement’ – and the danger of a singular Anthropocene narrative that silences the ‘unevenly universal’ (Nixon, 2011) responsibilities and vulnerabilities to environmental harm. Exploring themes such as environmental racism, ecological imperialism, and the slow violence of climate change, it suggests that Alexis Wright’s novels are of utmost importance for global conversations about the Anthropocene and its literary representations, as they bring the unevenness of environmental and climate crisis to visibility.